BITE ME

STUCK LABELS SUCK

I taught my boys very early on not to label people. "Mentally walk in their shoes and into their homes,"  I'd often tell them. "You don't know what they go home to. You don't know the reasons making them act the way they do!"

There was a boy living around the corner, back when they were 9 or 10. The kind of kid who always acts up, gets suspended, expelled, bounced around schools until finally he ends up in jail, on drugs, or worse.

Weird thing was, my oldest boy brought him home before I knew any of his history or the circumstances behind it. Did my son do it out of empathy? Was it a way to test what I had taught him?

I greeted Nathan in the same manner I greeted all their friends. I was polite, I interacted with him, we shared a laugh or two. I saw a normal ten year old boy, equally polite, well-mannered, well-spoken, respectful...

It was only after his first visit that my son told me the whole story. 

Nathan was a bully at school; he screamed at teachers, used offensive language, hit other kids, was constantly being punished, had been to every other school in the area and eventually kicked out, until he ended up at ours...

I have this thing, and I have passed it on to the boys. I am not interested in who or what someone was or someone is assumed to be. I care only about the way they interact with me in the now.

So it made no sense. How could a kid who presented much as my own did within our home, become some other, hateful creature outside of it?

I was on School Council at the time, so during the next meeting, I asked about him.

"Oh he's a nasty one." This offered with a deep frown from a female teacher nearing retirement.

"We ended up with him; we're the last school in the area. He's our problem now." The Principal, shaking his head.

"Usual stuff - single mum, multiple partners, maybe drugs... the kid's got no hope." The Student Counsellor; a thirty-something woman with glasses and a too bright lipstick.

"No way I'd let my kids near that little monster!" Another mum, with children Nathan's age.

Everything I heard contradicted what I saw and experienced, for he'd become a regular at our house by then, always a polite knock on the door and "May I come in?" My boys were his only friends. Every other kid either hated him or feared him. They had reason to of course, because he did do some horrible stuff at school. Yet not a single incident or even cause for a raised eyebrow in my household, and believe me, I was so confused by this kid I watched everything!

I met his mum once. She'd walked around, baby on hip. She was very young (I learned later she'd never finished school, falling pregnant and dropping out.) She looked stressed, she looked - she clearly wasn't coping. Three young children, partner gone, no child-support; living off the Government Single Parent Pension. She'd been labelled too. Identified, defined, and in turn living within the confines of her label. Some days she coped better, others not. She screamed, she hit out, as I later discovered after a longer conversation with the Student Counsellor. It was the only thing she knew. I remember wondering if she'd grown up in a similar household...

They moved soon after, to a town far away, and my boys kept in touch over Social Media from time to time. They'd often tell me how he'd been in trouble again, or been suspended. A few times I messaged him, telling him I was here, if he ever needed to talk.

One day, a couple of years later, the boys saw a post from someone else, saying Nathan had committed suicide; after getting into trouble with the law over some thieving and some other acts of violence at yet another new school.

We cried for him. A young life lost to a label.

That's why stuck labels suck. They create assumptions, leading to expectations, leading to justifications. He'd been labelled a bully and a bad-ass see, and he too had to live within the confines of this label.The message was reinforced at home, where he was beat-up, cursed at, neglected... Reinforced at school, where he was scolded, berated, punished... Reinforced by his peers who shunned him, gossiped behind his back and taunted/ridiculed him on Social Media.

This kid could have been saved. I spent weeks wondering if I could have done more, spoken to him more, spoken with his mum perhaps, or with those condescending bitches and bastards on School Council. There was a fair amount of guilt, for I'd seen the good in him, I'd witnessed how he responded when not forced to live within his label. In my house, he'd only ever been Nathan, just another ten year old kid; playing video games and munching on popcorn or riding his scooter in the street, with my two.

I thought of how he might have seen our home as a haven, a place where he didn't have to act as others constantly expected of him. There are good expectations; then there are bad ones. Nathan was lumped with the bad ones. No one expected anything other than what they received, as a result. He delivered what they anticipated. A vicious, cruel circle...

No one bothered to wonder if perhaps a shift in their perspective might result in a shift in his behaviour...

He still had enough whatever in him to respond to kindness. That's what kept me awake.He was a kid! An innocent kid mislabelled and paying the ultimate price.

We all carry at least one label throughout our lives. Be it 'bully', 'bitch', 'slut', 'bastard', 'con-artist', or 'coward', 'nerd', 'misfit', 'loner'... The list is long.

We work around and within these labels. Said often enough, they stick. When less is expected, we offer less. When bad behaviour is anticipated, we produce it. When we are treated as the label, not the human being, we respond in kind.

Lives are lost. Hearts are broken. Our perverse need to identify and tag and the subsequent expectations heaped on the labels we attach, create cycles of despair and desperation on both sides.

I still think of Nathan from time to time. I've known a few others like him. I am one. Most of us are victims of stuck labels.